I have a dreadful feeling in my bones that future historians may write of the May 2014 elections: "This was the wake-up call from which Europe failed to wake up."

Nuclear proliferation - the proliferation of WMDs altogether - is one of the greatest dangers of our time.

To be in Florence is to reflect on Europe's intricate diversity - and its lost creativity.

The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.

Europe is a woman, now middle-aged, who has already had a number of heart attacks and is currently experiencing the biggest health crisis of her life, but one that need not be fatal.

There is already a generation of European graduates who feel they have been robbed of the better future they were led to expect. They are members of a new class: the precariat.

Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.

The Eurozone has clearly gone spectacularly wrong, pulling down all the continental economies.

Europe's biggest problem is its success.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy.

A central claim of the Bush administration's foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism.

History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth.

It is not very important where you are, but where your thoughts are taking you is important.

Why ever long for something from the past when the future brings things that are so much better?

You could be going to have supper with someone who happens to be male, and all of a sudden he is your boyfriend of nine months... and I am cheating on my existing boyfriend.

Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.

Though the singer is silent…there is still the truth of the song.

A little stress and adventure is good for you, if nothing else, just to prove you are alive.

I feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist.

I just like to look beautiful sometimes.

Personally, I now aim for one month of overseas relocation or high-intensity learning (tango, fighting, whatever) for every two months of work projects.